


to be a room without a flame

by labeledbones



Category: Call Me By Your Name (2017)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-04
Updated: 2018-07-04
Packaged: 2019-06-04 22:51:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,080
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15157337
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/labeledbones/pseuds/labeledbones
Summary: When Oliver finally sees Elio again, they’re at a funeral.Oliver and Elio reunite in New York in 1988 during the AIDS crisis.





	to be a room without a flame

When Oliver finally sees Elio again, they’re at a funeral. Oliver wants it to not be him, wants his eyes to be playing a trick on him. Because, even though he’s been looking for Elio, hoping desperately to walk into Elio whenever he turns a corner, he doesn’t want to see him here, like this. The context is all wrong. 

But there’s no denying who the mess of curly dark hair standing on the other side of the church belongs to. 

Elio looks older. It’s been five years since Oliver last saw him, but it’s more than just time. Elio’s face looks tired, worn out in a way no 22 year old’s face should look worn out. He stands there, slumped shoulders in a dark gray suit with an arm wrapped tight around the woman next to him.

Elio turns his head and his eyes immediately lock with Oliver’s. 

There is someone standing at the front of the church talking and crying when Oliver quickly darts out the door in back. 

He spills out onto the church steps, the crisp fall air hitting his face. He breathes. He wonders if this is a dream. He’s had them before, has them all the time, has them even more frequently these days. Dreams where he sees Elio again. They are usually disjointed and terrifying. He is always reaching out and losing Elio again. He is grateful to wake up and realize he doesn’t have him, never will have him. He is grateful for the reality where he’s already lost him and won’t have to lose him again. 

Then he hears footsteps and the church door, old and heavy, banging too loud against the frame as someone else hurries out. 

When Oliver turns around, there he is. 

“Hi,” Elio says and then shakes his head, turns like he’s going back inside before he turns back again to face Oliver. He fishes in his suit jacket pocket and pulls out a crumpled pack of cigarettes. Slides one out of the box and offers it to Oliver. 

“I don’t smoke, remember?” Oliver says, finally speaking. He doesn’t recognize his voice. It sounds too confident and strong when everything inside of him is shaking. 

Elio, his own cigarette already dangling from the corner of his mouth, just raises his eyebrows at him and continues to hold the cigarette out. 

Oliver sighs and takes it, putting it between his lips. And then Elio is standing close to him, flipping open a silver lighter that Oliver recognizes as Sam’s, the initials _SP_ engraved on the front.

“This is my third one of these,” Elio says, stepping away from Oliver and blowing smoke out of the side of his mouth. 

He sits down on the stone steps and Oliver sits next to him. 

“Christ,” Oliver mutters, looking off down the street. He pulls smoke into his lungs and holds it there, feeling it burn. He lets it out, coughing a little, and says, “I didn’t know you knew Richard.” 

“I don’t,” Elio says. And then, “I didn’t. I mean, my friend?” He nods his head back towards the church. “Claire? She was friends with him, but I never really — And you? Were you — ?” 

“We were friends,” Oliver says and now his voice does start to shake.

“I’m sorry.” 

“This is actually my first one,” Oliver say and tries to smile, his trembling hand lifting the cigarette to his mouth. 

“My friend Tom was my first. About a year ago. He was fine and then he just really really wasn’t and then he was gone,” Elio says. 

Oliver looks at Elio’s hands. They are calloused and nicotine stained, bitten raw around his nails. He still wears the same bracelets he wore that summer, though now they are tattered and dirty. 

Oliver focuses on these details because it’s better than thinking about the fact that Elio has already lost people and he is only 22. It’s better than thinking he about how he will lose more and Oliver will lose more and that people are dying right now as they speak in apartments not far from this church, in hospitals up the street.

So he focuses on Elio’s slim fingers, remembers how they looked when he played piano in the afternoons, how they felt in Oliver’s hair, how they —

The sound of Elio crying breaks him from his thoughts and he looks back up at Elio’s face. It’s pure instinct that makes him reach out and brush tears from Elio’s cheeks with his thumb. 

“Shit,” Elio says. “Sorry.” He pulls his head abruptly away from Oliver’s hand, stands back up. 

Oliver finds that he can’t move. His body suddenly weighs a thousand pounds and he cannot lift himself up.

“I’m gonna go back inside,” Elio says, dropping his cigarette and stubbing it out with the toe of a polished shoe. He reaches down and his fingers lightly graze Oliver’s shoulder before he turns and goes back into the church.

Oliver just sits there on the steps. He buries his face in his arms and cries. He hasn’t cried, hasn’t allowed himself to feel anything really, for a long time. He cries for Richard and the rest of the dead and the dying. He cries for his friends who aren’t far off from it now. He cries for Elio. He cries for himself. 

He’s still sitting there when all the mourners come spilling out of the church, moving around him as if he doesn’t exist.

And there’s Elio again, standing over him. “Come on. Let’s go get coffee,” he says holding his hand out to Oliver. 

*****

Elio has new freckles. This is what Oliver is thinking sitting across from him in a dingy diner on Amsterdam. There are freckles on the bridge of Elio’s nose that he swears were not there that summer. He would remember those freckles. 

“So you’re — I mean, fuck,” Elio says, sitting forward in his seat and back again, not sure how to get started. 

Oliver tries for him. “When I heard from your dad that you’d moved out here, I started looking for you everywhere.” 

“You could’ve just asked him for my address,” Elio points out. 

Oliver shakes his head. “I wanted — I guess I wanted the universe to let me find you on my own. Like that would mean it was supposed to happen, we were supposed to happen,” he says. “Also, I didn’t think you wanted to see me. You stopped writing.” 

“Well, you found me,” Elio says sharply. He wipes his nose with the back of his hand and looks out the window. That familiar petulance. 

Oliver doesn’t say anything.

“It’s fucked up,” Elio says, angry, eyes still on the street outside where it starts to rain. “It’s fucked up that we’re all dying and no one cares. It’s fucked up that after five years I finally get to see you again and we’re both too fucking sad to even touch each other. It’s fucked up that I’m sitting here wondering if you’re sick, if we’re going to leave here and the next time I see you it’s at your funeral.”He stops, his throat tightening up. “It’s fucked up,” he says again. “Everything.” 

“I’m not,” Oliver says. “Sick, I mean. I’m not.” 

Elio nods and he falls back against the booth, his body loosening up a little bit. 

“And you?” Oliver asks, terrified of the answer. 

“No,” Elio says. “I’m — I’ve been tested. I’m okay.” 

“Good.” Oliver lets out a breath, presses his fingertips against his eyes. “Good,” he says again. “Thank fucking god.” 

And then Elio starts to laugh. “God,” he says, looking at Oliver’s face. “I’ve missed you.” 

Oliver cocks his head to the side. “Have you?” 

Elio was seventeen when they met and Oliver has never had any delusions that Elio would hold a torch for him. He’d assumed Elio would move on quickly and easily. Elio would fall in and out of love dozens of times and Oliver would just be a blip, a flickering memory, a story he told to new lovers, his first love but not his last love. 

“If you think I stopped — ” Elio breaks off and clenches his jaw. Tears spill out of his eyes and he brushes them away. “It’s been you this whole time, you know? Every person I fuck is just an attempt to recreate how it felt with you. It never works.” 

Oliver wants to take him somewhere, cover Elio’s body with his, kiss every inch of his skin. It comes on abruptly, the desire to consume him, to absorb him. 

“Oliver,” he says gently. 

And Elio smiles, “Elio.” 

*****

They go for a walk even though it’s still raining, letting their suits get wet. “I have more than one now,” Elio says, shrugging and leading Oliver in the direction of the park. 

Oliver stops as they’re passing under a bridge. Elio keeps walking for a few paces before he turns back around and smiles at Oliver in the dimly lit tunnel. Oliver wants to kiss him, but instead he just says, “It’s strange to think of you existing outside of Italy, outside of that villa, outside of that summer.” 

Elio takes a step toward him, hands in his pockets. “I’m here,” he says, taking another step closer. “I’m right in front of you. Stop trying to turn me into a dream.” And then he leans his body against Oliver’s and just as quickly pushes off of him and starts walking again.

Oliver keeps standing there and watching Elio. He can still smell the lingering scent of Elio: cigarettes and warm cologne and rainwater. He can still feel the heat of Elio’s body. 

At the other end of the tunnel, Elio turns and gestures for Oliver with a nod of his head. Oliver jogs to catch up with him and takes Elio’s hand when he’s by his side. 

Elio lets his fingers slip between Oliver’s, lets them hold onto each other for a second, before he lets go. 

“Where do you live?” Elio asks, twisting up the left corner of his mouth. 

*****

Oliver’s Washington Heights studio is cluttered with books and papers and takeout containers. He is embarrassed when Elio walks through the door. He moves a pile of dirty laundry from a chair to the floor.

He mumbles, “Sorry,” and then busies himself in the kitchen with making coffee even though they just had coffee at the diner. He needs something to do with his hands. 

He can see Elio standing in the middle of the chaos, turning and taking it all in. Oliver’s life, his lonely sad existence here on the sixth floor. Elio lifts a book off the coffee table and puts it back down. He peers at the art on Oliver’s walls, prints he’d bought at the Met and stuck to the wall with thumbtacks, a few photographs of his grandparents, his brother. 

“You didn’t get married,” Elio finally states the obvious when Oliver comes back from the kitchen with two mugs, both chipped in multiple places, handing one to Elio. 

Oliver sits on the couch and gestures for Elio to sit next to him, but he doesn’t. He keeps making the same slow circle around Oliver’s small apartment. 

“No,” Oliver says. “I didn’t.”

Elio nods, sets his mug down, makes another slow circle until he comes back around and falls into Oliver’s lap, his mouth pressing against any bit of Oliver’s skin he can find. 

“Shit,” Oliver hisses when hot coffee goes sloshing all over his shirt. 

Elio is already working on the shirt’s buttons, pushing Oliver’s jacket off of his shoulders, and then pushing the shirt off, his mouth on Oliver’s collarbone, Oliver’s throat, Oliver’s nipples. 

“Wait, wait, wait,” Oliver says, breathless, taking Elio’s face in his hands, bringing him back up so they can look at each other. He kisses Elio slowly, carefully, with more control than he actually has.

Elio pulls away, sits back in Oliver’s lap, and breathes, his parted lips pink and wet. Oliver kisses him again with less control. He tastes the same as he did that summer. Oliver swears he can taste apricots and cherries and those Italian cigarettes he smoked. Oliver swears he can hear the shutters banging loudly against the house. 

“You’re doing it again,” Elio breaks through his thoughts, pulling his mouth from Oliver’s. “Be with me. Here, now.” 

Oliver nods. “Sorry,” he says, standing and taking Elio’s hand. “Here, now.” He pulls Elio across the room to the bed. 

****

Elio pushes his face into Oliver’s armpit and groans. Oliver is half asleep, lost in that blissful post orgasm delirium, but he turns to look at Elio. It is the middle of the afternoon and the sun has finally come back out, glowing warm on Elio’s skin. Oliver kisses his face, every bit of it, until Elio laughs and pushes him away. 

They go quiet, just existing together. And then Elio says softly, “Do you want to talk about Richard?” 

“I’m a terrible person, aren’t I?” He looks away from Elio, feeling ashamed at how happy he is right now when just this morning he’d been crying at his friend’s funeral. 

Elio shakes his head. “You’re the best person I know,” he says. Oliver laughs because it sounds like he means it. “Don’t,” Elio warns. “You are.” 

Oliver touches Elio’s cheekbone, draws his fingertips down to his lips. “Honestly, Richard would love that I’m here fucking a 22 year old,” he says, laughing again. 

Elio’s face is gentle and open as he watches Oliver laugh. “I love you,” Elio says. 

“Please say that again,” Oliver says as he turns on his side and pulls Elio closer to him. 

“I love you.” Elio kisses him. 

Oliver buries a hand in Elio’s hair. “I love you,” he says back.

****

In the dark, Elio kisses the insides of Oliver’s knees and says, “I found you.” He kisses the creases of Oliver’s thighs and says, “I found you,” again. 

“You found me,” Oliver repeats mindlessly over and over, arching his hips, giving himself over. 

****

In the bright moonlight, Oliver feels Elio come apart beneath him, and drops his head between Elio’s shoulder blades. “Stay,” he says against the curve of Elio’s spine, feeling desperate and terrified.

****

The sun is coming up again, casting pink light into Oliver’s apartment, when Elio kisses him on the mouth and says, “Come with me to Italy this summer.” 

Oliver laughs and flips Elio onto his back, pinning him against the bed. He looks down at him for a long time, the warm sunrise on his face, catching in his hair, making him unbearably beautiful. “I would marry you if I could,” he says, surprising himself. 

Elio squirms in his grasp, turns his face away but not before Oliver sees it crumple, dissolve into tears.

“Someday,” Oliver says, feeling foolishly optimistic, considering how they found each other again, considering the future is no longer a given for any of them. 

“Someday,” Elio agrees, letting Oliver lick the tears off of his face, laughing a little. “But until then come to Italy with me.” 

“Yes,” Oliver says. “Okay.”

****

Oliver makes eggs and toast and mostly watches Elio eat. When he’s done, Oliver makes him more eggs and watches him eat those too.

“Fattening me up?” Elio grins, shoveling the last bits of egg into his mouth. 

Oliver just nods, sipping his coffee. “I’m gonna have bruises from your hipbones.” 

Elio laughs and the walls of Oliver’s apartment echo it back like they want to hear that sound forever. 

****

They ride the subway together back to Elio’s apartment, sitting close, grateful when the train is slow and it takes almost an hour to get down to W 4th, when the car they’re on empties out except for an older woman sleeping heavily against the window, when they get stopped in a tunnel and they kiss quietly until the train starts to move again. 

“You’re sure you’re not a dream?” Oliver asks, smiling, knocking his shoulder into Elio’s as they climb the steps out of the subway station. 

Elio stops on the corner. He is still in his suit from yesterday though now he carries the jacket hooked on his finger, the sleeves of his shirt rolled up despite the chill in the air. He looks at Oliver and rocks back on his heels. He rocks forward and kisses Oliver. 

“You’re awake,” Elio says, biting down on Oliver’s bottom lip to prove it. 

****

“In my dreams, I lose you,” Oliver says. “Every time.” 

They are naked on the mattress Elio uses as a bed. Elio smokes a cigarette, one leg hooked over Oliver’s leg. 

“Then it’s good this isn’t a dream.” Elio blows a smoke ring up over their heads. 

“I could still lose you,” Oliver says, watching the afternoon sunlight as it inches slowly across the ceiling.

“You could,” Elio says as he reaches over and places his cigarette between Oliver’s lips. He holds it there for him and pulls it away again. 

“Why are you suddenly so calm about everything?” Oliver asks. “Yesterday you were angry and now— ”

"Now I have you again and I’m just — We have to allow ourselves happiness, you know? I could be angry, sad, terrified. I am all of those things most of the time, but right now, with you? I want to be happy,” he says. “Don’t you want to be happy, Oliver?” 

Oliver closes his eyes. He tries to imagine it: being happy with Elio, not letting fear or shame or panic dictate his life, just living. 

Oliver opens his eyes and takes in Elio lying next to him, his body, his face, the way his hair falls across the pillow grown out longer than it had been five years ago, the way he hollows his cheeks as he drags on his cigarette, the way he grins at Oliver just letting the smoke drift out between his lips, the way he exists in the space by Oliver’s side. 

He realizes he doesn’t want to just be happy. He wants to feel everything, all of it, even the things with sharp edges. He puts a hand on Elio’s chest and says, “I want to be alive.” 

Elio stills and looks at him, placing his hand over Oliver’s, bringing his palm to his mouth. “Me, too,” he says quietly. 

****

Later, they fall asleep in the blue light of dusk, listening to the city, listening to each other breathe, and Oliver doesn’t dream.

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from ["Room Without a Flame" by Cataldo](https://cataldo.bandcamp.com/track/room-without-a-flame).


End file.
